Arvale: Journey of Illusion

"Arvale: Journey of Illusion" is an RPG game made by PDAmill Game Studios for Pocket PC. It works with Windows Mobile 2003 or newer. It is available in .cab and .exe installer. It supports QVGA (240x320 and 320x240), VGA (640x480), and Square Screen (240x240) resolutions. Palm Treo 700w/700wx is supported according to their website.

It is a fantasy medieval-setting RPG, set in the World of Arvale. You get to play as Duncan Forsythe, a gardener-turned-hero. You get to meet the usual sorts: dragons, orcs, golems, and many other monsters. In fact the website mentions that there are about 200 different monsters and enemies. I obviously did not count, and if I disregard the different names (What I mean is that one monster model gets used again and again with several different names, which means different level and health points of the monsters) I think there should be much less than that number. However, there is still enough variety to keep you entertained.

The game is played from top-down view. You use stylus to walk around the world map. When you encounter a monster, the game switches to side-view where you go face to face with the monster. The battle is turn-based, so you can take your time deciding the best moves. The world is vast. The detail is quite amazing for a Pocket PC game standard. There are some side quests in addition to the main quests. All in all they are quite nice. Multiple endings are possible too, so there is re-playability.

The website promises 20 hours of total playtime, but I think you can finish the game by 10 to 12 hours instead. Maybe even less if you are good. If you are a lazy gamer like me, you find that the walkthrough is available on their forum.

There is a free PC version of the game (full version, not trial) available on the website, so you can play it under Windows, provided that you are content to play it in small screen (as big as the Pocket PC version). You can even play it under Linux using Wine, at least it works in Ubuntu as I have tried it.

Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with the game company. This is purely a short review. If you visit the website, there are links of other, much more comprehensive reviews to be read.